Book of the Damned 3: Horsemen of the Apocalypse

[Shemeska]

So now that this has been out for a little while, both to Paizo subscribers and as both pdf and store releases, I figured that I'd come here looking for any commentary from folks who've gone through it.

Actually...ok, I'm coming here shamelessly begging for feedback, because this one was a labor of love that I've wanted to write for literally years.

 

[Salthorae]

I don't yet own this, but after reading the product page you linked to, I will definitely be purchasing it after I get some Christmas $$ in the bank!!

 

[Serphet]

I have cover to cover'd the book. It is AWESOME. By far my favorite of the BotD line.

My only concearn is balance around soul trading and the soul drinker PC. The soul trade balance can be done at the table based on in game situations. The soul drinker though seems a bit more rough.

Haven't had any table time with them and likely wont, but they are great reading. When we finish Jade Reagent, I think I'm going to do some BotD style cults for my own homebrew campaign.

 

[MarkAHart]

I only recently started picking up Pathfinder books, and this one was one of my first purchases. (Thus, I don't have the first two volumes of this particular series.)

My initial reaction was tremendously positive; after reading more in-depth into the book, it stands as one of my favorite. I love what was done to make the daemons interesting; they are wonderfully differentiated from demons and devils, making them an excellent component in the trifecta of evil.

There is so much meat to this book, and yet there is so much potential sub rosa, especially for the GM. I have to wonder how tough it was in writing this to decide what to leave out and what to put in.

Big thumbs up here!

 

[Shemeska]

I have cover to cover'd the book. It is AWESOME. By far my favorite of the BotD line.

My only concearn is balance around soul trading and the soul drinker PC. The soul trade balance can be done at the table based on in game situations. The soul drinker though seems a bit more rough.

Haven't had any table time with them and likely wont, but they are great reading. When we finish Jade Reagent, I think I'm going to do some BotD style cults for my own homebrew campaign.

I'm really glad that you like it!

WRT the soul trading, it's the sort of thing that's going to require some DM adjudication, or players not going out of their way to try to find ways to over exploit something like that beyond the intent of being a powerful but RP ramification causing thing (of course doing that tends to be something that given the topic, it tends to be something out of the range of most PC concepts and into BBEG territory).

When you get a chance to use it, let me know how it goes. I'm really keen to see how they play at the table!

 

[Shemeska]

I only recently started picking up Pathfinder books, and this one was one of my first purchases. (Thus, I don't have the first two volumes of this particular series.)

My initial reaction was tremendously positive; after reading more in-depth into the book, it stands as one of my favorite. I love what was done to make the daemons interesting; they are wonderfully differentiated from demons and devils, making them an excellent component in the trifecta of evil.

There is so much meat to this book, and yet there is so much potential sub rosa, especially for the GM. I have to wonder how tough it was in writing this to decide what to leave out and what to put in.

Big thumbs up here!

The first two volumes are spectacular. Wesley and James each did a great job giving a PF'centric look at devils and demons respectively without retreading the same ground as you might find in the late 3.x FCI and II.

And if I managed in your view to give daemons a distinctiveness all their own to stand as a clearly defined NE that didn't just seem like a placeholder race to fit into an alignment slot, I've done one of the major things I intended to do.

Lingering influence perhaps from the 2e 'loths and all of the behind the scenes details in the books that seemingly nobody IC knew about. There was a pretty good outline of what needed to be covered, but it was up to me to decide all the fine details really. Word count was the mother of all factors in deciding what made it in and what didn't. As much as I might have wanted, I wasn't going to get to rattle off on a dozen extra pages of daemonic history, the Oinodaemon, etc. Mind you a lot of stuff that was trimmed out or never went past the brainstorm stage might pop up again in the future as it becomes possible and appropriate.